Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10640374
Ginetta E. B. Candelario
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10637690
Dia Da Costa
Abstract This article combines historical and life-writing approaches to demonstrate how caste is made invisible in histories and structures of education, canonical knowledge, and research. As a dominant-caste (savarna) Bengali academic, the author follows caste-oppressed feminists to offer a methodological intervention that challenges several ways in which castelessness is reproduced in feminist scholarship. The author asks why savarna write castelessly. “Writing castelessly,” wherein caste reflexivity is absented from analysis, solidarity, and teaching, is one manifestation of savarna feminists’ historical-material relation to caste. Narrating regional caste histories of savarna Bengalis, the author shows that her practice of writing castelessly is founded on material structures of power—historically claimed monopolies over culture and education, land, labor, and political representation. Relatedly, another reason savarna write castelessly is that disciplinary training in social sciences in higher education taught the author to think, feel, read, and write castelessly. Finally, the author traces the reproduction of these disciplinary structures in her scholarship. Ultimately, this self-critique grounded in historical and material relations of caste seeks a feminist readership invested in public accountability and denaturalizing Brahminical merit in academia.
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10626350
Cherise Fung
Abstract In a post-9/11 world, the figure of the female suicide bomber has emerged as a contentious figure in global discourse. Through the character of Saraswathi, Nayomi Munaweera’s novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) foregrounds how the construction of this subaltern figure hinges on her susceptibility to rape. This relationship between rape and suicide bombing is deployed differently by the counterterrorist institutions that target her and the ethnonationalist movements that recruit her to make her speak as both victim and agent while silencing her. This article thus argues that we need to move away from the framework of victimhood and agency, which assumes subjectivity without accounting for how the body of the female subaltern is excluded from inhabiting subjecthood as a construct of bounded national sovereignty. Using Jasbir Puar’s theory of queer assemblage, the author explains how Saraswathi’s suicide bomber in ITM is constructed as a figure of antinormative subjectivity through a discourse of U.S. exceptionalism in opposition to a normative U.S. national identity and sovereignty. The author builds on Puar’s insights, which draw on affect theory, to rethink Saraswathi’s violent protest as a moment that destabilizes these normative identities and their related social scripts. The author further posits alternative visions of antinormative subjectivity in the novel that allow for Saraswathi’s survival after her rape.
{"title":"In the Name of Sovereignty","authors":"Cherise Fung","doi":"10.1215/15366936-10626350","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-10626350","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In a post-9/11 world, the figure of the female suicide bomber has emerged as a contentious figure in global discourse. Through the character of Saraswathi, Nayomi Munaweera’s novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) foregrounds how the construction of this subaltern figure hinges on her susceptibility to rape. This relationship between rape and suicide bombing is deployed differently by the counterterrorist institutions that target her and the ethnonationalist movements that recruit her to make her speak as both victim and agent while silencing her. This article thus argues that we need to move away from the framework of victimhood and agency, which assumes subjectivity without accounting for how the body of the female subaltern is excluded from inhabiting subjecthood as a construct of bounded national sovereignty. Using Jasbir Puar’s theory of queer assemblage, the author explains how Saraswathi’s suicide bomber in ITM is constructed as a figure of antinormative subjectivity through a discourse of U.S. exceptionalism in opposition to a normative U.S. national identity and sovereignty. The author builds on Puar’s insights, which draw on affect theory, to rethink Saraswathi’s violent protest as a moment that destabilizes these normative identities and their related social scripts. The author further posits alternative visions of antinormative subjectivity in the novel that allow for Saraswathi’s survival after her rape.","PeriodicalId":54178,"journal":{"name":"Meridians-Feminism Race Transnationalism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135323503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10637636
Michaela Django Walsh
Abstract This piece, written in the form of a letter to my son, explains the meaning of his name. In Spanish the word lienzo is a type of drystone wall. Spanning rural areas of Mexico, the lienzo has—for centuries—been a way to gently delineate space. I frame the composition of this hand-stacked structure, which is designed to accommodate movement in relation to the biopolitical technology of the U.S.-Mexico border fence, migrant dispossession, and my own family’s experiences navigating borders and cleaved spaces.
{"title":"Between Skin and Stone","authors":"Michaela Django Walsh","doi":"10.1215/15366936-10637636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-10637636","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This piece, written in the form of a letter to my son, explains the meaning of his name. In Spanish the word lienzo is a type of drystone wall. Spanning rural areas of Mexico, the lienzo has—for centuries—been a way to gently delineate space. I frame the composition of this hand-stacked structure, which is designed to accommodate movement in relation to the biopolitical technology of the U.S.-Mexico border fence, migrant dispossession, and my own family’s experiences navigating borders and cleaved spaces.","PeriodicalId":54178,"journal":{"name":"Meridians-Feminism Race Transnationalism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135323278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10637600
Julie Torres
Abstract The 2016 shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was mourned as an unspeakable act of violence against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community. But what was perhaps less audible was the fact that Latinxs, particularly Puerto Ricans, who represent more than one million of the state’s population, were disproportionally affected. In the wake of the tragedy, a group of Puerto Rican women came together to demand translation and mental health services for survivors and their families. This article details their public refusals to be silenced from the public imaginary of mourning and loss. It also considers how the multiple subject positions of Puerto Ricans shape belonging both locally and across transnational borders. In doing so, the author makes the case for an intersectional analysis of mass violence, mourning, and resistance, in order to generate inclusive spaces and a more just vision for the future.
{"title":"“We Are Orlando”","authors":"Julie Torres","doi":"10.1215/15366936-10637600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-10637600","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The 2016 shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was mourned as an unspeakable act of violence against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community. But what was perhaps less audible was the fact that Latinxs, particularly Puerto Ricans, who represent more than one million of the state’s population, were disproportionally affected. In the wake of the tragedy, a group of Puerto Rican women came together to demand translation and mental health services for survivors and their families. This article details their public refusals to be silenced from the public imaginary of mourning and loss. It also considers how the multiple subject positions of Puerto Ricans shape belonging both locally and across transnational borders. In doing so, the author makes the case for an intersectional analysis of mass violence, mourning, and resistance, in order to generate inclusive spaces and a more just vision for the future.","PeriodicalId":54178,"journal":{"name":"Meridians-Feminism Race Transnationalism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135323492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10637645
Erika G. Abad
Mamá,As the earth shudders, you open your eyes.Your eyes take in the cold gray sky hovering behind palm trees that survivedHurricane Maria, the hurricane that split your cabinets.Earthquakes cracked your walls.You hear your name. Feel fingers smoothingAgainst your brow. Gray sky, quaking earth, persistent palm treesBegin preparing for your return.From your bed, your frail voice calls out toYour Amados, your beloveds. Amado Sr.,Your beloved husband, sits by you.He takes remnants of your hands still filled with flesh and warmth into his.Amado Jr., the younger beloved, brews your coffee in the kitchen.The aroma of Cafe Rico wafts past decaying cabinets.The paint crumbles off the walls.you revisit memories of las nenas de Mamá.They crawl into bed with you as coffee percolates.Their knobby knees, your gnarled, knuckled handsshare warm hugs and giggles.They squeal and hum and hug into you how much they love you.They never outgrow the words and the hugs girls need to grow up to give to men. Mamá, if you only knew how long I never wanted to love them.The elder Beloved asks what else you need.The younger Beloved adds milk and sugar before bringing you coffee to your bedside. I still remember you bringing it to mine, MamáThe elder lifts your lip up to the cup as his son sits.They don’t know, among other things, what the graying sky, the weathered trees, the shuddering earth have come to do;they do not yet know of your homegoing.Café con leche is the last bit of sweetness to touch your lips.After it has coated your throat, with a coughand a squeezing of hands, your soul follows the graying sky, weathered trees, the shuddering earth home.You leave your body behind surrounded by the ones you insisted see you through this end.And you, Mamá, are grateful.The younger beloved throws himself on what’s left of your skin and boneswhile the elder beloved weeps. Their cries, ride the Caribbean winter breeze,bringing providence in to call an ambulance.You inform the gray sky, the quaking earth, and the stubborn palm trees—You tell them—that you and your God have prepared.You bought your coffin, your plot, you bought the nameplate your life never allowed you to read.You reserved the funeral home.Las nenas need only worry about the planes. Mamá, I worry about fading. I worry about the tumor returning. Mamá, I still worry about COVID-19.As others’ souls slip through them, the gray sky, the trembling earth, tell youThere’s never enough. Resistant tears, and youthful heartsAre never prepared.Never wanting,Never wanting to lose your hands.You remind the earth, the sky, and the silent treesyour love doesn’t die with your body. Mamá, how can I agree when forgetting to love me was necessary for your surviving?All the secrets, all the unnamed wounds, the palm trees hiss,Get left behind.They linger, the quaking earth says, longer than it takes your body to join me.Those scars flounder, the palm trees persist, before you become the earth that feeds me.The unnamed hurt, the gray sk
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10637654
Nancy Kang
They had swarmed, expectant,in the back bleachers, ripping skirt and shirther legs kicking up, catching wild handsbucking like a rodeo pony, prodded electricthe frantic powdering of moth’s wingsmouth stopped by mitt upon mitt of salted slapsarched backs, pounding fists on keyboardsmad jazz, tympanic torsionhamburger grinding and all the belchingoil spills and dumb eruptions then—the blue stillness of the left-alone.She fetus-rolled and went blanksinking through gel, catching each edgewith a rough palm in passinga red meditationa serration.Without the hard shell to clutch back allthat had been pulled out wildly and stuffed back neatlywith barbed-wire stitches and scotch-tape salvesshe had to relearn balance, love the slantof light going gentle there, mend hips and ego,numb the grins and whispers thatswaggered by, accept prayers lingeringin wet, kind eyes like river-smoothed stones.She cauterized dreams of tangled amber,body’s newness, thoughts of princely thingsonce promised in dabs of pink gloss, stickyglitter, and a snow-globe’s gilded carousel.She marked a calendar cross for every daythat followed the one bruised blue, likestrolling a graveyard lit fullof luminol kisses.It hurt, the sad sag of Dad’s shoulders,the tv’s curt clicks and cold triggerof Mum’s tongue, volleying blame, spitting disbelief.Under words flung like a gnarled net, she satdog-dejected, inert as a snoutful of quills.She would seek then hide the pills, hoardan arsenal of sugar, stir the sediment of drinks and sighHealing is as gusty and oceanic as time.Sleep is her suspension, a whale-belly bedknobbed by barnacles and the deep embraceof ribs so heavy, curved, and mute yetbuoyant like a breath in winter.She vows next time to be vengeful, agile,and kinetic, so as never to be caughtsurrounded againwithout weapons.
{"title":"Bruise Blue","authors":"Nancy Kang","doi":"10.1215/15366936-10637654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-10637654","url":null,"abstract":"They had swarmed, expectant,in the back bleachers, ripping skirt and shirther legs kicking up, catching wild handsbucking like a rodeo pony, prodded electricthe frantic powdering of moth’s wingsmouth stopped by mitt upon mitt of salted slapsarched backs, pounding fists on keyboardsmad jazz, tympanic torsionhamburger grinding and all the belchingoil spills and dumb eruptions then—the blue stillness of the left-alone.She fetus-rolled and went blanksinking through gel, catching each edgewith a rough palm in passinga red meditationa serration.Without the hard shell to clutch back allthat had been pulled out wildly and stuffed back neatlywith barbed-wire stitches and scotch-tape salvesshe had to relearn balance, love the slantof light going gentle there, mend hips and ego,numb the grins and whispers thatswaggered by, accept prayers lingeringin wet, kind eyes like river-smoothed stones.She cauterized dreams of tangled amber,body’s newness, thoughts of princely thingsonce promised in dabs of pink gloss, stickyglitter, and a snow-globe’s gilded carousel.She marked a calendar cross for every daythat followed the one bruised blue, likestrolling a graveyard lit fullof luminol kisses.It hurt, the sad sag of Dad’s shoulders,the tv’s curt clicks and cold triggerof Mum’s tongue, volleying blame, spitting disbelief.Under words flung like a gnarled net, she satdog-dejected, inert as a snoutful of quills.She would seek then hide the pills, hoardan arsenal of sugar, stir the sediment of drinks and sighHealing is as gusty and oceanic as time.Sleep is her suspension, a whale-belly bedknobbed by barnacles and the deep embraceof ribs so heavy, curved, and mute yetbuoyant like a breath in winter.She vows next time to be vengeful, agile,and kinetic, so as never to be caughtsurrounded againwithout weapons.","PeriodicalId":54178,"journal":{"name":"Meridians-Feminism Race Transnationalism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135323494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10637573
Rosetta Marantz Cohen, Doris H. Gray
Abstract This interview with Doris H. Gray, author of Leaving the Shadow of Pain: A Cross-cultural Exploration of Truth, Trauma, Reconciliation, and Healing, explores the impact of political trauma across time, and the strategies for healing and justice. The conversation with Gray focuses on the ways in which her own experiences, as the child of a traumatized German Jew, intersect with those of formerly persecuted and incarcerated Tunisian women before and after the Arab Spring. What are the possibilities and limitations of restorative justice for those haunted by history?
{"title":"A Conversation with Doris H. Gray on the Power and Limitations of Restorative Justice across History, Culture, and Gender","authors":"Rosetta Marantz Cohen, Doris H. Gray","doi":"10.1215/15366936-10637573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-10637573","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This interview with Doris H. Gray, author of Leaving the Shadow of Pain: A Cross-cultural Exploration of Truth, Trauma, Reconciliation, and Healing, explores the impact of political trauma across time, and the strategies for healing and justice. The conversation with Gray focuses on the ways in which her own experiences, as the child of a traumatized German Jew, intersect with those of formerly persecuted and incarcerated Tunisian women before and after the Arab Spring. What are the possibilities and limitations of restorative justice for those haunted by history?","PeriodicalId":54178,"journal":{"name":"Meridians-Feminism Race Transnationalism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135323505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10637591
Devaleena Das
Abstract Examining the critical genealogy of transnational feminism, this essay proposes a feminist theoretical model called quilted epistemology derived from the Black feminist art of quilting. Aiming to strengthen transnational feminism, quilted epistemology intends to resolve some of the existing limitations of transnational feminism and embrace multiple and incompatible feminist knowledge positions from the Global South to the Global North.
{"title":"What Transnational Feminism Has Not Disrupted Yet","authors":"Devaleena Das","doi":"10.1215/15366936-10637591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-10637591","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Examining the critical genealogy of transnational feminism, this essay proposes a feminist theoretical model called quilted epistemology derived from the Black feminist art of quilting. Aiming to strengthen transnational feminism, quilted epistemology intends to resolve some of the existing limitations of transnational feminism and embrace multiple and incompatible feminist knowledge positions from the Global South to the Global North.","PeriodicalId":54178,"journal":{"name":"Meridians-Feminism Race Transnationalism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135323498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1215/15366936-10637672
Zeynep K. Korkman
Abstract As critiques of anti-Muslim racism travel transnationally, they get translated in relation to complex histories of imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism, and nationalism. These (mis)translations produce unexpected uses and abuses of anti-Muslim racism as an academic and political concept, with significant consequences for transnational feminist solidarity. This article explores, as a case in point, the emergence of a “Black Turk” identity in millennial Turkey where pious Muslim identity, once marginalized under a secularist state, has reasserted itself by deploying an analogy of Black to pious Muslim. Obscuring the nuances of local power relations, the pious Muslim/secular fault line was oversimplified and mistranslated into the resonant American idiom of the Black/white binary. This analogy and the progressive critiques of anti-Black and especially anti-Muslim racisms were then instrumentalized by an increasingly authoritarian and gender-conservative Islamist Turkish government to legitimize its repressive agendas, even succeeding to garner unexpected sympathy from some feminist politicians and academics in the United States. Naive confidence that such dichotomous racial/religious categories and familiar political vocabularies can guide feminist analyses and politics risks employing a seemingly transnationalist and anti-imperialist but in truth U.S.-centric understanding of non-U.S. struggles for social justice and thwarting potential transnational feminist solidarities.
{"title":"(Mis)Translations of the Critiques of Anti-Muslim Racism and the Repercussions for Transnational Feminist Solidarities","authors":"Zeynep K. Korkman","doi":"10.1215/15366936-10637672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-10637672","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As critiques of anti-Muslim racism travel transnationally, they get translated in relation to complex histories of imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism, and nationalism. These (mis)translations produce unexpected uses and abuses of anti-Muslim racism as an academic and political concept, with significant consequences for transnational feminist solidarity. This article explores, as a case in point, the emergence of a “Black Turk” identity in millennial Turkey where pious Muslim identity, once marginalized under a secularist state, has reasserted itself by deploying an analogy of Black to pious Muslim. Obscuring the nuances of local power relations, the pious Muslim/secular fault line was oversimplified and mistranslated into the resonant American idiom of the Black/white binary. This analogy and the progressive critiques of anti-Black and especially anti-Muslim racisms were then instrumentalized by an increasingly authoritarian and gender-conservative Islamist Turkish government to legitimize its repressive agendas, even succeeding to garner unexpected sympathy from some feminist politicians and academics in the United States. Naive confidence that such dichotomous racial/religious categories and familiar political vocabularies can guide feminist analyses and politics risks employing a seemingly transnationalist and anti-imperialist but in truth U.S.-centric understanding of non-U.S. struggles for social justice and thwarting potential transnational feminist solidarities.","PeriodicalId":54178,"journal":{"name":"Meridians-Feminism Race Transnationalism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135323499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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